One extremely private habit that I have developed which I have not really admitted to anyone before is a tendency to sing stupid shit when I am in the house by myself. By "stupid shit" I usually mean "narrating what I am doing at the time to the tune of something unrelated". And, over the years of doing this — it's an uncontrollable impulse at this point — I have determined that The Garlean Territorial Anthem for Gyr Abania and Surrounding States: The Measure of our Reach from Final Fantasy XIV is absolutely ideal to put stupid words to.
If you are unfamiliar with this stirring piece of music, here is the original:
The original lyrics run thus:
Beyond majestic mountains Across the emerald dale On march the ivory standard United we prevail
From distant shores of Othard To lakes of Aldenard The light of mighty Garlemald For e'er our guiding star
It continues in similarly "patriotic but built on stolen land" fashion after that. It's a whole thing. What you can hopefully tell from listening to the above, however, is that it's a song with a relatively simple melody line, and fairly simple rhythms. This makes it absolutely ideal for use when you are singing about something stupid and/or disgusting.
Please feel free to replay the above video, while singing the below words to it.
I'm going to take a dump now I'm going to have a shit I'm going to shoot poo out my arse And fill the toilet up
I'm going to take a shit now I'm going to have a dump The poo will come right out my bum And God, it really stinks
I laugh in the face of rhyming schemes. But there's something innately satisfying about having a big ol' dump and bellowing that at the top of your lungs in a deep baritone. I recommend you try it. Even if you have a high voice. I suspect a glass-shattering, vibrato-filled soprano will also fit the bill nicely.
I don't remember exactly when I discovered that The Garlean Territorial Anthem for Gyr Abania and Surrounding States: The Measure of our Reach was ideal for this purpose, but I find it very difficult to stop myself from doing this any time I am in the house by myself. I don't even have to actually be taking a shit to want to sing it. It just sort of comes out. There are other versions of the lyrics, too, mostly relating to bodily functions and/or ablutions, but I will keep those to myself. A girl's got to have a bit of mystery.
Naturally I do not do this when anyone else is present, because I would be absolutely mortified if anyone heard what I was doing and the words I was singing. And not just because I've always been rather self-conscious about my singing voice. I also generally make sure the windows are shut.
In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I'm admitting this right now. I just thought you might find it amusing.
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Every few months, it seems, the collective community of the social media platform Bluesky suffers from a minor existential crisis, usually relating to some commentator or other not having found an audience on the platform and thus writing what they probably believe to be a withering putdown, but which more often than not ends up coming across as a bit sad, desperate and pathetic.
The most recent case comes in the form of someone who posits that Bluesky, as a whole, has been bad for American political discourse, because it has effectively siloed off pretty much the entire "Left" into their own little bubble. This isn't an entirely inaccurate view of the situation, but you also have to bear in mind that this largely occurred because Twitter, under Elon Musk, made a specific effort to silo off pretty much the entire "Right" into their own little bubble. Consequently, Twitter is more of a shithole than it's ever been in the past, and Bluesky… well, it's occasionally all right, occasionally prone to the sorts of behaviour that made me sour on Twitter in the first place. At least for the most part you don't have to put up with Nazis and "grok what is this" underneath every post.
I'm not here to talk about the relative merits of Bluesky itself though; rather, I want to focus on a post from Ars Technica's Kyle Orland, itself a response to a post from journalist Faine Greenwood, semi-seriously commenting on what people really need to do if they want to use social media to get a political message out:
I see this viewpoint expressed a lot these days, and while it is disappointingly not entirely wrong about the situation, it does, to me, reflect a defeatist attitude to culture: the assumption that there can be only one dominant form of media, and that in this case, it is lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time.
I, as I have made pretty clear on numerous occasions in the past, fucking hate lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time. I find it actively insulting to my intelligence, and incredibly offputting when someone posts, like, say, "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:" followed by a video of their face pressed up against the camera yelling whatever their important announcement is. I never find out, because I am actively repulsed by that kind of video.
Aside: in a Discord I frequent, one poster continually reposts this guy's stuff, and dear Lord I find it the most offputting thing imaginable. Nothing to do with the guy's appearance; I just don't want that many faces yelling at me.
Anyway, the thing I find frustrating about all this is: who the fuck decided that the only thing we're allowed to do now is lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time? Who the fuck decided that writing is out, particularly long-form writing? Because I certainly fucking didn't.
I like reading! I like reading long things! I like writing! I like writing long things! As far as I'm concerned, a good piece of writing is much more likely to stand the test of time than vertical video of someone's grandpa wittering on about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie! And I find it near-impossible to believe that I am alone in this!
I am part of a generation who grew up with books, magazines, and websites that posted long-form writing. As far as I am aware, my entire generation hasn't suddenly dropped dead overnight, so why the fuck can't we have at least a basic bit of respect for our tastes rather than this content slurry that is shat out at great force and speed every day?
"Oh, but Pete, people are still serving your niche," you might say. Are they? Are they actually though? Because last time I checked, games media sites were being shut down or turned into thinly-veiled gambling advertisements at a frightening rate. I used to have magazines and websites that I read on a regular basis; today, even people who I used to respect as people who always seemed that they'd keep blogging, come rain or shine, have all but vanished from the Internet, leaving us with little more than the garbage left behind.
Perhaps those are the people who have the right idea. Give up on trying to "find an audience" on the Internet, and just retreat into a world where these issues don't exist. There are still a few magazines out there — although gaming-specific ones are thin on the ground. There are folks making fanzines and suchlike. New books continue to be written — some of them even without being AI-generated! So perhaps the answer is just to retreat, quietly, and continue to enjoy the few good things that do, apparently against all odds, still exist.
It just feels like giving up a space where I always felt like I could "be myself" and express myself freely has been taken over, completely, by the supposedly "cool kids" who are actually vapid fuckheads with nothing of any real substance to contribute to culture. And that really sucks. "The Internet" used to be somewhere that felt like I was home, where I was among my people. I haven't felt that for a long time now.
I don't feel like we should have just rolled over and let this happen — but that is what happened, and there doesn't appear to be any way to turn back from it now. And no-one appears to be in any great hurry to correct this situation.
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I am pleased to report that I have reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XI. This is not the level cap, but it is a significant milestone, as it was, I believe, the original level cap when the game first released. As time went on and various expansions released, players got the opportunity to increase their personal level cap in increments of 5 levels at a time, though each one of these milestones requires you to complete a tricky and/or time-consuming quest. I'm in the middle of one of those now, which will allow me to level up to 55 when I'm done.
I'm enjoying the game a lot, though my desire to attempt it without a guide was a foolhardy endeavour. Final Fantasy XI was always designed with "community" in mind, and built on the assumption that said community would share information with one another and help each other out, and as such there are a lot of things it just doesn't tell you. It's a lot better in this regard than it used to be, primarily thanks to the "Records of Eminence" feature, which gives you a series of objectives to accomplish that can guide your progression, but you'll still often be given a mission that tells you to go to a particular zone and find something in that zone, with absolutely no indication whatsoever of exactly whereabouts in that zone the thing is to be found. There is no minimap and no quest marker feature in Final Fantasy XI, so you're either off to find a needle in a haystack yourself, or consult the community (which now, of course, also includes comprehensive wikis) and be able to focus your efforts a bit more.
There are still one or two roadblocks that require actual interaction with a human being. One of the missions for Windurst requires that you get through a door called the "Sealed Portal", which is colloquially known by the community as "Three Mage Gate". The reason for this is that the originally intended method of opening this door was to gather a party containing a white mage, a black mage and a red mage and get them to stand on the appropriate marks on the floor, which would open the door. This was subsequently updated to only require someone with the "Portal Charm" key item — which, naturally, you get just after the mission in which you would first need it — to make things marginally easier and less dependent on wrangling an entire group.
These aspects aside, though, the game has been eminently soloable so far, thanks to the Trust system. You're given some decent Trusts right from the get-go, and more are unlockable quite easily. There are some borderline overpowered ones available without too much difficulty, too, but with the number you get to add to your arsenal very quickly, you can pretty much build a party however you like to play, and use the characters you find most appealing. My only slight beef with the system is a narrative one; many of the Trusts you get early on are characters that you probably won't have met yet, and this makes it tricky to feel a sense of attachment to them. Because, in the context of Final Fantasy XI's story, Trust magic is dependent on you having a strong bond with a particular person, this feels a bit dissonant, but you soon learn to deal with it — and after a while, you'll be able to get together a party that feels like it consists entirely of "story" characters anyway.
It's definitely a very different sort of game to Final Fantasy XIV. It's not actually turn-based, but with its pacing it might as well be. It's not a game where you attacking requires you to be constantly pressing buttons to unleash combos, unlike its follow-up; instead, it's more about equipping your character well, ensuring they have good training in the skills they need to succeed at the challenges ahead of them, and approaching combat encounters carefully and thoughtfully. Sure, you "do less" on a moment-to-moment basis, but it's a different kind of satisfying to successfully clearing difficult encounters in Final Fantasy XIV; it's less about skill with the buttons and more about traditional RPG-style number crunching. I'm not saying either way is "better" — both games are very good at what they do — but it is interesting to note quite how different they are from one another now I'm deeper into XI than I've ever been.
My next big milestones for Final Fantasy XI will be breaking a couple of level cap barriers, and then completing the base story from the original game, which culminates in a big fight against the dreaded Shadow Lord. There's still a lot to do after that, though, and most folks seem to agree that things start getting really good story-wise after you've got through the base game's material. I'm looking forward to it — and at the rate I'm going, I should be getting through it at a decent pace, too.
I'm glad I finally decided to do this. Final Fantasy XI has kind of been a "white whale" for me in terms of completion, so I knew I just had to make the time to play it and do it properly. Now that I'm doing that, I'm having a really good time. I doubt I'll get too hardcore into its "endgame" stuff — my main priority is to beat the story, and after that I will probably return to XIV — but there is plenty to do just on the journey from 1 to 99. And that's absolutely fine with me!
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I finished a rewatch of Peep Show the other day, confirming for myself that I had indeed never watched it right to the end. Now I have, and I came away from it with some thoughts that I wanted to share, so that's what I'm going to do today.
Peep Show, for the unfamiliar, is a Channel 4 comedy show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, written by Sam Bain, Jesse Armstrong and Andrew O'Connor, with occasional contributions from Mitchell and Webb themselves. It's the show that put Mitchell and Webb on the comedy map for many people, and is noteworthy for its main gimmick of being shot entirely in "first-person" from the perspective of the various characters, including the occasional ability to hear their thoughts — hence the name. We're getting to "peep" into the most intimate parts of their lives, including their private thoughts, in a way that simply isn't possible in "reality".
From the beginning, Peep Show sets itself up as a show where its two main characters are heavily, heavily flawed. Mitchell's Mark Corrigan character is stuffy, socially anxious, nerdy and, at times, rather arrogant, while Webb's Jeremy Usborne is also arrogant, albeit in a different way, self-obsessed, selfish, unambitious and, at times, borderline deluded about the possible directions his life could go in.
Early in the series, one could argue that Mark is somewhat set up to be the "protagonist" of sorts, since much of the ongoing storylines follow his attempts to woo his work colleague, Sophie. As time goes on, though, the show becomes more generally about how both Mark and Jeremy find themselves on their own separate pathways towards self-destruction, each coming at the concept from a different direction. Mark approaches it from the angle of repeatedly fucking up the genuinely good things that happen in his life, while Jeremy's obsession with drugs, alcohol and sex to the almost complete exclusion of building a "normal" adult life makes his trajectory clear pretty early on.
In many ways, Mark and Jeremy are polar opposites, but they are also a lot more similar than they would care to admit. And, as the show progresses, one comes to realise that perhaps the "El Dude Brothers" perhaps aren't as close friends as they thought they were; indeed, the very last line of the show comes from Mark, looking at Jeremy, reflecting on the many trials and tribulations they have both faced — and inflicted on one another — and thinking "I simply must get rid of him". The implication, of course, is that Mark will never be able to get rid of Jeremy — not because the pair of them are incredibly close friends, but because they're stuck with one another, thanks to each other's most awful tendencies having rubbed off on each other to an exceedingly unhealthy degree.
Thus one could probably say that Peep Show is about toxic masculinity. And indeed there are plenty of examples of that throughout the show, with the main ones being Mark's erstwhile boss, Alan Johnson, who is an obnoxious "alpha male" business leader type — although later shown to have enjoyed success primarily through luck and charisma rather than actual talent — and Jeremy's friend "Super Hans", who in many ways is far more fucked up than Mark or Jeremy will ever be — though at times he does seem to have his shit together a lot more than the pair of them.
Interestingly, though, neither Mark or Jeremy are examples of toxic masculinity in quite the same way. Jeremy likes to talk a big game and make out that he's always getting women, but we see repeatedly throughout the show that he is completely incompetent in developing close interpersonal relationships. Mark, meanwhile, has aspirations for a while of being a big balls businessman like Johnson, but over time comes to accept that he is, at heart, a fairly unremarkable person — and that that is not necessarily a bad thing.
To be sure, the pair of them do engage in behaviour that is plenty toxic, often in the name of pursuing masculinity. But a lot of the time they do this for the sake of living up to a misguided sense of "ideals" rather than because they actually feel that way. Neither of them have a clue how to navigate the challenges that life repeatedly confronts them with, and neither of them really know how to be a stereotypical "man", in terms of the unattainable ideal they both have in their minds. And this leads them both down destructive paths that ultimately bring them both to their own downfall — multiple times.
But Peep Show isn't a bleak tragedy. While I'm sure many people watching the show do feel a bit bad for Mark and Jeremy, particularly by the time the final episode rolls around, the central duo are, at their core, figures to laugh at. The show is a comedy because the situations they keep getting into are so ridiculous, but I think a lot of the humour lands because it's plausible. You can picture people you know going down some of the roads that both Mark and Jeremy fling themselves headlong down. You might even have broken off friendships with similar degrees of toxicity that the pair of them demonstrate.
It's a cautionary tale in many ways, then. Neither Mark or Jeremy are "villains" as such, nor are either of them fundamentally "bad people". But one thing Peep Show demonstrates more than anything else is that it is very easy to find yourself circling the drain if you don't make at least a bit of an effort to get your life under control — and that, as you grow older, if you don't find a good balance between "things that make your life better" and "things that make you feel good in the short term", where those two things are seemingly in conflict with one another, you will almost certainly find yourself bitter, twisted, and if not alone, then certainly stuck with someone who is bad for you, and that you will never, ever be able to get rid of.
A downer ending? Perhaps. But it was perfect for the story the show was telling. It would have been easy to give everyone on the show a "happy" ending for the final episode, but as harsh as it sounds, I'm glad they didn't get it. They got the ending that they deserved — and that has pretty much ensured I will remember the way things concluded a lot more vividly than if everything was all neatly resolved and tied up with a little bow.
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After I wrote all that yesterday, I then promptly went and recorded four videos. They're casual, breezy, fairly low-effort videos, but videos they are nonetheless. The first one went live today:
Yes, it's H.E.R.O. by Activision! I was super-excited to help bring the Activision Collection cartridges to Evercade, as these are some of my all-time favourite 2600 games, and H.E.R.O. is a real classic. With this kind-of-sort-of series, I'm just gonna play whatever I damn well feel like on Evercade and just chat freeform and see what happens. Evercade and Chill, you see.
This is definitely the kind of video I enjoy making the most, because in some ways it helps me to feel a bit less lonely. I know that I'm talking "to myself" while I'm playing, but I'm also talking to anyone who's watching, and I've always said that my intention for this style of video is to provide an experience roughly akin to sitting down with a friend and playing something together. Consequently, I do my best to try and include the viewer in the things that I'm saying — and also not to assume knowledge, for those who are new to this stuff. Which, as time goes on, there are more and more people who fall into that category.
I've been wanting to get back to doing Evercade videos for a while, but it didn't feel quite "right" to be doing them while I was also handling the company's social media and stuff. Now I've thankfully left that side of my job in the dust, I feel I can get back to doing this sort of thing — which in its own way will hopefully benefit the community and the product, too. I mean, I have a miniscule audience, yes, but if just a few of those folks see something I cover and the fact it's on Evercade, then that's pretty cool.
The four videos I recorded yesterday are all Activision-related, because that's what I felt like playing at the time. As I say, this "series" will have no particular set structure or format aside from "I'm going to play whatever the hell I feel like from the Evercade library as it exists at the time of recording". I will have to be a teensy bit careful not to accidentally reveal any new carts before they're announced — I already have the next two cartridges that are being announced on the 15th, for example — but given that there's 80-something cartridges altogether and nearly 800 games on Evercade at this point, I'm not going to be running out of material any time soon.
So I hope you enjoy this series! It will hopefully be a fun, casual, laid-back, relaxing sort of series, both for me as a creator, and for you as someone watching this stuff. (I recommend falling asleep to my videos. I do it quite frequently.)
On that note, the weekend is almost over, so I think it's probably time for bed.
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Every weekend for about the last month and a half, I've found myself thinking "I should make some more YouTube videos", closely followed by "but I don't really feel like it".
To a normal, well-adjusted mind, the follow-up thought that should then occur should be "so I'm not going to do any". But when you have sort of got into the habit of doing something, it's difficult to take a step away from. You feel obligations to continue. You feel guilt that you're not doing something. And those aren't healthy things to be feeling about something that is supposed to be a fun hobby more than anything else.
An oft-repeated refrain of the casual, hobbyist YouTuber is "when it stops being fun, I stop doing it". But it's not always that easy. You feel like you're letting down your audience, however small that might be — the people who tirelessly show up every video and leave a supportive comment or just a Like. You feel like you're letting down yourself, too; you've invested time, effort and, often, money into doing this, so shouldn't you keep doing it?
And there's always part of you that still wants to keep doing it for the reason you originally started doing it. In my case, it's to show off interesting games that I don't feel get the attention and love that they deserve, particularly on platforms that don't get the love they deserve — like the Atari 8-bit and ST. I am particularly conscious of this due to how, on a recent visit to The Cave, someone actually came up to me and said that they not only enjoyed my YouTube videos, they specifically enjoyed the way I do them.
As regular readers will know, this is something that I have mentally gone back and forth on lots of times — I started doing Let's Play-style videos, where I give a brief introduction to a game and then just play it while talking over it, but have found that scripted, more review-like videos tend to do better numbers for the most part. I enjoy doing both; the Let's Play ones are less hassle to do in terms of editing, but I think the scripted videos are probably "better" videos, whatever that means. I say I don't really care about the numbers — and I don't, really, otherwise I would put more effort into the tedious "marketing" side of running a YouTube channel — but it's hard to ignore when you get over a thousand views (sometimes much more than a thousand) on a scripted, edited review of a modern indie game or an Xbox 360 compared to just about three figures when providing a guided tour of an Atari 8-bit game no-one has heard of except longstanding enthusiasts.
This person telling me that they specifically enjoyed my Let's Play-style stuff for exactly the reasons I do it — to provide the illusion of sitting with a friend, enjoying a game together — kind of threw me a bit. I'm pleased, obviously, but it's the first time someone has specifically come up to me and said "yes, I like specifically what you are doing, rather than the usual algorithm-baiting stuff". And it's given me a certain amount of pause.
The other reason I'm kind of feeling a bit burnt-out with YouTube is that I'm doing some writing stuff that I'm enjoying right now. It's a very (very) long-term project that I'm working on, so it's going to take a considerable period of sustained effort to bring to a conclusion — and I really would like to bring it to a conclusion — and all that is sort of sapping my enthusiasm and energy for making videos a bit.
I do like making videos. I am always satisfied when I've put out some videos. But I'm just sort of not feeling it right now. And I feel guilty about that, for all the reasons outlined above. This, in turn, can lead me into a bit of a self-destructive cycle, where I get locked in a loop of worrying about what I think I "should" be doing, and then sitting staring into space worrying about the fact I don't feel like doing that thing.
Perhaps this is a signal that for today, at the very least, I should just rest, relax, take a break and enjoy myself, and then see how I feel about things tomorrow. And if I feel like making some videos tomorrow, great. If I don't, that should also be fine. We'll see.
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I have now tried, I think, all the "Red Bull Editions" in their sugar-free forms. (EDIT: no I haven't, but I've started now, so I'll finish.) So I thought, in celebration of 700 days of meaningless word vomit (for the third time!) I would provide my unsolicited thoughts on each of them. Let us begin.
Coconut and Berry: The Coconut Edition
This is the one I tried today, and the one I was probably most skeptical about, as I'm never sure about coconut flavour things — plus "coconut and berry" sounded like an odd combination.
I was pleasantly surprised that this had quite a nice flavour. The coconut wasn't overpowering and neither was the berry flavour (blueberry, specifically, apparently) — it was a nice balance and an unusual but enjoyable taste. I did find it had that rather cloying mouthfeel that many sugar-free drinks have, though, so it took me quite a while to get through the whole can.
I'm not sure I'll have this one again, but I didn't hate it. A tentative recommendation.
Grapefruit and Blossom: The Lilac Edition
I was also a bit unsure about this one; I generally detest anything that has "floral" notes and have done ever since I had my first unwelcome taste of Rose flavoured Turkish Delight many years ago. As such, I was concerned that this would be more "Blossom" and less "Grapefruit", but thankfully it was the other way around; this was mostly just a nice, refreshing grapefruit flavour drink, with the edge taken off a bit by a pleasantly fragrant finish.
Out of all the ones I've tried, I think this one was my favourite.
Fuji Apple and Ginger: The Apple Edition
There seems to be a sort of half-arsed Japanese theme to some of these "Editions"; there's a "Cherry Sakura" one available in the full-sugar variant, but that doesn't appear to have a sugar-free version. Anyway, I wasn't sure about this one because of the presence of ginger; ginger is something that I like when it's forming part of a compound flavour (like in a nice curry, say) but if I can taste it by itself, I find it a tad "soapy" and unpleasant.
Thankfully, much like the Lilac Edition, the latter of the two ingredients was pushed somewhat to the background, leaving the apple flavour to shine with just a pleasant warmth to finish with. It was a considerably more pleasant taste than I was expecting, and will likely try this one again — my hesitance over the ginger element meant that I only had a sip of my wife's one of these rather than a full can.
White Peach: The Peach Edition
It's peach flavour. Peach flavour is good, if a tad unremarkable. This was decent, but I don't think there's that much reason to pick it over a Peachy Keen or Full Throttle Monster (which I'm convinced are the same flavour anyway). If you're getting it as part of a Meal Deal (and you know you are), you can probably get a bigger can of Monster for the same price.
Iced Vanilla Berry: The Ice Edition
I had no idea what to expect from this one. What I ended up getting was a fairly pleasant fruity drink that had a slight, not-unpleasant lingering nasal presence afterwards. Apparently eucalyptus is involved somewhere. Like the other Editions, though, the more "unusual" flavours aren't overpowering, though, so what you basically have here is a fruity, berry flavoured drink that might clear out your sinuses a bit. I didn't get much of the vanilla at all.
Forest Fruits: The Pink Edition
Probably the "safest" of all the Editions flavours, this was completely unremarkable in almost every way. It tasted like cheap supermarket red squash with a bit of fizz in it. That's not a bad thing, but it's also not worth paying three quid a can for.
What did I miss?
Apparently there are "Blue", "Green", "Ruby" and "Summer" ones out there that I haven't tried yet. Of these, the one I feel I'm least inclined to like is the "Green" one, which promises "Curuba-Elderflower". I don't even know what that is. I also don't anticipate being a big fan of the "Ruby" one, which promises "Spiced Pear". I'm not a huge fan of pear flavour, nor am I fan of spiced fruit, so this doesn't seem like it is particularly designed with my tastes in mind.
The "Summer" one, meanwhile, promises a citrus flavour, which is an evergreen — although also the possibility of being an unremarkable, uninteresting flavour. I'm keen to try that one, though. I'm also intrigued by the "Blue" one, too; I don't know what a "Juneberry" is, but I anticipate that one will taste like blue. You know very well what that means.
Anyway, my conclusions from all this is that they are, of course, extortionate when purchased by themselves, but if you can get them as part of a Meal Deal they're worth taking a punt on if you fancy something a little bit different. I think my favourite is the Lilac one, closely followed by the Apple. I'd probably rank the Coconut one the lowest, though it was still drinkable — and the Peach and Pink ones are just a bit boring. But sometimes you want boring, don't you?
So that's that. I'm off to go play Final Fantasy XI.
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As… promised? threatened? recently, I've started playing Final Fantasy XI again. And I am reminded, once again, for the umpteenth time, that I really like this game, particularly in its current form. I'm sure there are plenty out there who will bemoan how "dumbed down" its 2026 incarnation is compared to what it was like 20 years ago, but man, c'mon. You can play most stuff solo now; some might say that misses the point of an MMO, but there's still a markedly different vibe existing in a world knowing there are other players around. You see other people going about their business; you participate in the economy; you contribute to asynchronous team activities.
I am also reminded that Final Fantasy XI is not a game for everyone. Specifically, it is not a game for the impatient, because there is a lot to do, and it takes quite a long time to do pretty much anything… except level up, now, which goes at a significantly more brisk pace than it did the first time I played it all those years ago.
But we're talking about a game where the ability to run slightly faster than normal is dependent on someone completing a long and difficult quest, it rolling a random chance of the "Swift Shoes" effect coming up, and then you healing to full and having a nice sit down for a couple of minutes to "charge" the slightly-faster-than-normal movement speed — which, of course, immediately fades away the moment you either attack something or get attacked.
We're also talking about a game whose original implementation of "fast travel" required you to fight your way to a huge "crag" two zones away from your starting city and collect a crystal from it, all for the privilege of being able to teleport an inconveniently long distance away from any of the game's towns.
We're talking about a game where, when you want to cross the sea, you have to physically stand and wait for a ship, and when you're on the ship, you have to wait for the voyage to complete. (Sometimes monsters attack. A lot of the time you just have to enjoy the ride.)
If those descriptions make you smile, even a little bit, you are probably someone who will enjoy Final Fantasy XI.
The fact the game demands so much patience makes it feel very rewarding, though. When you achieve something, you feel like you've bloody well earned it. This is not a game where you are a super-special Warrior of Light pretty much from the get-go; this is a game where you are a relatively normal person — albeit one with, arguably, extraordinary combat abilities compared to your "peers" among the NPCs — just trying to make their way in the world. Make a bit of cash, get a bit of training in, visit some new places.
It's this rather open-ended feel that I really like about Final Fantasy XI. In many ways, it feels like a very pure reflection of what I call the old "world RPG" formula exemplified by titles like the early Ultima games. There is a long-term goal to go and complete, but the vast majority of your playtime will be spent doing rather freeform activities to build up your character in a way that you see fit.
Some of the best things that have been added to Final Fantasy XI since its original release are designed to make it more than just grinding monsters for hours at a time. The "Records of Eminence" quests do a great job of giving you things to do and acting as a sort of guide to what it is possible to do in the game, without having to spend half your playtime looking at a wiki. The "Field Guide" and "Grounds Tome" books at the entrances to field and dungeon areas respectively provide you with focused sets of monster targets to down in exchange for generous experience bonuses. And of course there's plenty of quests, the main storyline missions and, once you get later into the game, lots and lots of side activities. I don't yet know how "important" some of these things are — or indeed what 90% of them are at this point — but I'm intrigued to find out.
Thus far I'm up to level 25 on the job I started with — Warrior this time around — and I'm levelling Monk as a subjob for now. I'm on the "rank 2" missions for my home nation, and making good progress. I've also kicked off the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline that was added much later than the other main stories, and acts as another kind of "guide" through what the game offers, with its own narrative to follow — and plenty of extremely helpful benefits as rewards along the way.
I'm enjoying myself a lot. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get through the various storylines, but levelling has been going at a brisk pace, and I'm feeling good about how things are going so far. I'm looking forward to finally doing things like taking down the Shadow Lord, which I've never done before, and particularly getting into the well-regarded Chains of Promathia expansion storyline, which longstanding FFXI players have been banging on about the quality of for years.
So yeah. It's a good time. You just need patience. And if there's one thing I have developed over the years, it is a very strong sense of patience.
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Nintendo surprised everyone with an out-of-the-blue Star Fox Direct earlier today, announcing a reboot of Star Fox for Switch 2. This is, I think, the third time they've "redone" the original Star Fox at this point, as it went Star Fox/Starwing (SNES), Star Fox 64/Lylat Wars (N64), Star Fox Zero (Wii U) and now this, which, in the tradition of all good reboots, is just called the name of the original thing it's rebooting. Star Fox. At least it won't be confusing in Europe.
I love Star Fox. It's probably one of my favourite Nintendo series. Specifically, I love the Super NES original, because while it's perhaps not the most technically impressive game when looking back on it retrospectively, it's still a great game that I enjoy a lot — and it has an amazing soundtrack. I rate the original Star Fox's soundtrack light years ahead of its 64-bit counterpart, because Star Fox 64 hailed from that age where Nintendo games had music that was beautifully composed, but played back on one of the worst MIDI synths a console has ever had. The new one takes what sounds like the music from Star Fox 64 and fully orchestrates it, which is just lovely.
The new game looks like it's going to be mostly keeping to Star Fox's roots as an arcade-style game with a level-based structure, and branching paths through the complete sequence of levels depending on the things you do and your overall performance. I'm interested to see how this will be received in the modern age, since the vast majority of big-budget games that come out today are designed to be huge, sprawling timesinks that take hundreds of hours for a single playthrough. Making a game that is short but highly replayable feels like it's a ballsy thing to do these days — and it really shouldn't, but it does.
It does look like the new Star Fox will be highly replayable, too. As well as the main story mode with its branching paths, it looks like there's a "Challenge" mode where you play a single level and attempt to complete specific objectives in it. This could either be great fun or extremely annoying, but I think it's the right decision to separate it out into its own mode rather than integrate it into the main story.
There's also what looks like a really fun multiplayer mode, too, with 4v4 battles between Star Fox and Star Wolf. It doesn't look like any of the three modes on offer are a simple deathmatch, either; there are different objectives to complete on each one, which will reward fancy flying as well as keeping the enemy off your back.
All in all, I'm excited and pleased to see Star Fox get yet another chance. Part of me wishes they'd let the story, such as it is, move on a bit instead of continually remaking the same one over and over again, but ultimately this is a gameplay-centric experience — at least previous installments have been — and so the reason you're blasting everything out of the sky doesn't matter too much. It does look like the whole thing is much more "cinematic" now thanks to the advances in technology we've seen over the last few console generations. It's nice to see Fox and company be able to chat with one another as fully modelled characters rather than just avatars chattering away during gameplay.
So I guess that's a Switch 2 game I'll be adding to my library when it arrives, although if it's on a Game Key Card, we are going to have words, Nintendo.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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How about another post? I've already fired off my Final Fantasy XI shot in the previous post, so what to write about now, I wonder?
Perhaps I can tell you a bit about the Evercade Game of the Month game which came out today. I made a video about it and everything, like, for my actual job:
The Game of the Month programme, if you're unfamiliar, is a thing we do every so often where we give folks the opportunity to download and play a game on a sort of "trial" basis for a month or so, then all the games we've featured in a particular year get bundled together onto an Indie Heroes cartridge the following year, along with some cartridge-exclusive games.
It's a fun way to give some attention and love to the "homebrew" scene, and it effectively means that we get one of the first cartridges of next year up and running well ahead of schedule, which helps take a bit of the pressure off. And with the ambitious projects we've been doing recently, any opportunity to take a bit of the pressure off is very welcome indeed!
Last month, we had a special "shareware" version of BioMenace Remastered, which I'm thrilled we're bringing to Evercade, as I used to love BioMenace when I was a kid. I only ever had the shareware version, as many of us did, so it will be very exciting to play through the full thing when we eventually have it. (I also bought a copy on PC to support the chap behind it, who is a thoroughly lovely person.)
This month, we have Inspector Waffles: Early Days, which is an adventure game built in GB Studio, the tool of choice for seemingly 95% of Game Boy homebrewers these days. It's a flexible little engine, clearly primarily designed for top-down role-playing game-type experiences, and Inspector Waffles: Early Days makes good use of it to create an adventure game featuring not only top-down exploration and examining things, but also first-person point-and-click sequences, dialogue puzzles and a bunch of secrets. You can probably blast through it pretty quickly if you know what you're doing, like most adventure games, but it's an enjoyable ride with the whole "everyone is cats" thing being a fun gimmick.
We're actually still assembling the list of Game of the Month titles for the coming months, so if you happen to be reading this and you have something that will work on Evercade — generally speaking, an game built on any of the platforms we've previously emulated games for is a solid bet — then be sure to drop developer@evercade.co.uk a line and we'll see what we can do.
An hour and a half left to go on the Final Fantasy XI patch. Maybe a bit of NEOGEO while I wait, then…
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.
